Page 44 of A Valiant Prince

“How’d you become…well, whatever it is you are now?” Anna asks him.

“What do you mean?” he asks her. I take the seat on the far side of Anna after grabbing myself a cup of coffee.

“Your father was a baron. You should have been one too,” she states the obvious and something I did not know.

“You’re royalty?” I ask, cutting off their dialogue. They both swivel to look at me, Anna with annoyance and Jack with amusement.

“Well, I think royalty might be an overstatement. I think I’m somewhere around eightieth in line to the throne,” Jack muses.

“And they let you work for Interpol?” Anna asks, a trace of hope in her voice.

Jack laughs. “I think the term ‘let’ may be a little loose of a description,” he says. “But you, Your Highness—”

Anna holds up a hand. “Please, Mr. Ross, none of that formal shit, please. Call me Susanna or Anna,” she says.

“Well, then call me Jack,” he responds with a grin. Anna nods. “What I was going to say, Anna, is that your reputation precedes you. You may very well be one of the best hackers in the world.”

At that, Anna grins and shrugs. “I enjoy it,” she says nonchalantly.

“Your skills are…well, everyone in the intelligence community knows about you,” Jack says. Anna’s face is one of shock. “I mean, they don’t know that Knight2E4 is you, but they do know that Knight2E4 has helped bring down some pretty big players in the underground criminal community.”

“I do what I can,” Anna says.

“It’s appreciated,” Jack says to her. “So, what is it that I’m doing here, exactly?”

Anna wrings her hands. This surprises me because my princess is not the type of person to get nervous. She stops herself and looks into Jack’s eyes.

“Because I trust you,” she says.

Jack’s eyebrows both go way up at her statement. “Oh?” he says.

“Jack, I’m almost one hundred percent sure that whoever is trying to kill us may actually be one of us or working for one of us,” she says. Her admission makes me catch my breath because while we’ve discussed this, we haven’t put it quite in those words.

The look on Jack’s face tells me that this theory is not shocking to him. And that makes me wonder what he knows.

“That is the most likely theory,” he says. “I’ve been trying to fit the puzzle pieces together but the more I dig, the puzzle pieces I find.”

“Exactly,” Anna replies. “That’s just it. This goes deep, deeper than I know we’ve considered up until now. I feel a little…well, stupid, for not having ever investigated my own family before. Until now, I never thought anyone I knew personally could be…well, I never thought they were a threat. And that’s why I need your help.”

“Do you have an idea?” Jack asks her.

She clears her throat and looks back over her shoulder at me, and I’m momentarily confused because she’s giving me a very guilty look and I don’t know why.

“I think it’s time we flush out our bad guy,” she says to him.

“And what’s your plan to do that?” Jack asks. Pete steps forward, clearly disliking this idea as much as I do.

Anna holds up her hand to stop Pete from speaking. “Just hear me out, OK?” she says, looking around the room. I follow her gaze and see that Hendrick and Lucas have joined us. I question whether we can trust them, but then Anna speaks again. “I trust everyone in this room because I’ve investigated each and every one of you. You’re all clean.” She looks at back at Jack. “You are a little harder to investigate, but I trust you. I’m concerned about my brothers. I think there’s a reason we were separated a few days ago.

“What if we go somewhere that looks like we’re hiding…together, but we’re not. If the plan was to separate us, then let’s change up that plan,” she starts. Pete, Lucas, and Hendrick all take a step forward so that they surround the island. “Jack, you still own a gatehouse on your family’s property, yes?”

Jack looks a little surprised, but nods.

“What if my brothers and Logan and I all went there and maybe we leave a little trail of breadcrumbs,” she says. “I’m guessing that house is actually a bit of a…what’s the saying, ‘Fort Knox’?”

“Anna, you know what you’re saying, right?” Jack asks.

She nods. “I’m saying we all play sitting ducks so that someone thinks they can take us out. Only, we aren’t playing sitting ducks. Up until now, we’ve had a poisoned pawn in our midst, gentlemen, but I think it’s time to turn the tables, it’s time for us to be the poisoned pawn. Whoever this fucker or fuckess is, we are going to bring their ass down,” she says. She’s damn sexy when she talks like this, and I have to push that feeling way down because it’s completely inappropriate timing.

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